The Hidden Street Art of La Boqueria Market, Barcelona

Walking along Barcelona’s famous tree-lined pedestrian walkway that is ‘La Rambla‘, we found ourselves passing one of the highlights of Barcelona’s busiest street – La Boqueria Market. A popular stopping place for tourists from across the world, this fresh food market with its 100-year old metal roof called to our market-loving curiosity and so we decided to duck-and-weave between the guided tours and venders of lottery tickets to take a peek inside.

Once inside, we instantly lost interest with the market itself as what you’ll find out on your own travels to Barcelona; it’s a little bit touristy. So much so that rather than taking pictures and enjoying the food on offer around us, our camera firmly stayed by our side as we meandered around the stalls selling exactly the same foods and snacks as the next stall and the stall following on from that.

By a quick glance at each others faces we both knew what the other was thinking and we both nodded agreement without saying a word that it’d was best to leave La Boqueria Market by any route possible. By some utter luck we found our way out the back entrance where men were wheeling their stock of candied fruits and fresh vegetables in and out of the market door, and what we found out that exit was a travelling couple’s street art dream.

As more men parked up their freshly stocked vans of fruit and veg for sale at the market, wheeling them back and forth and stacked taller than themselves, we couldn’t help but move amongst them all to take some pictures of the street art and graffiti sprayed across each and every van parked behind the market.

Illegal Or Planned?

It was really hard to determine if the street art on the vans was illegally painted or commissioned by La Boqueria to draw more attention to the market itself due to the high quantity of graffiti on show. Surely not all of these were done in broad daylight?

It seemed to us that the vans must only be parked behind the market during the daytime rather than the night, and seeing as just how busy the market is during the day with all of the camera toting tourists that pass underneath the covered roof of the market on La Rambla, it’d be pretty hard to paint them in the day without someone seeing.

Factoring in that, the fact that Barcelona has one of Europe’s largest street art scenes, and also that some of the graffiti murals were of fruit and vegetables; it seems pretty obvious to us that there must have been some cooperation with the local street art community and the market.

A Mixture Of Street Art Themes

Not every side of each van has cartoon-like fruit and veg sprayed on them, in fact, some are fairly typical graffiti murals and street art pieces, but each and every one of them in this open air street art gallery we both absolutely loved and couldn’t stop taking pictures of. Hopefully there’s a few here that you’ll love and want to hunt behind La Boqueria Market for yourselves the next time you’re travelling or taking a holiday in Barcelona.

Ha ha! I hadn’t thought of that, just how strange it was that all of them were in the same place, like they’d all been painted in different parts of the city of country and just by chance were all in the same place at the same time.Dale recently posted…Planning? We’ve Never Been Happier To ‘Unplan’ Our Travels

It’s so cool! I actually think it’s more awesome than aggressive street art of Berlin I’ve seen on your blog. I really like the positive energy of this place and you guys are great for finding such hidden places!
By the way, your new design is amazing!! You must be so excited! I remember the day we changed our theme and it was like working on a new blog :D!!Agness recently posted…La Paz, Bolivia For Less Than $25

It does kind of have that feel that it’s a whole other blog, but we hope that we still have some of the same qualities that made you drop by here in the first place 🙂 Plus, we’re a long way from competing with Cez for good WordPress design!

We love it when, otherwise nondescript and dull streets or in this case, delivery trucks, add a bit of colour to the scenery by embracing street art. Keep up the great work.Hai – Notes of Nomads recently posted…Photo a Day Project: Weekly Round-up #21

How fun! I love little surprises like this, such travel serendipity. I spent two weeks in Spain, but skipped Barcelona in favor of the southern coast. But it’s high on the list of places I want to go once we’re settled in Europe. And love the site redesign, by the way!Heather recently posted…Longwood Gardens: A Botanical Wonderland in Pennsylvania

We’re just about to leave our housesitting assignment here just outside of Alicante and might spend a few days cruising around the coast, but we’re not too sure where yet – such is the pleasure of ‘unplanning’!Dale recently posted…Two Years Later, Our Packing List Refreshed

We based ourselves in Torremolinos for a few days, which has fun Picasso sculptures dotted about. The Picasso museum is in nearby Malaga, and the mountain village of Mijas is gorgeous! Happy travels 🙂Heather recently posted…Longwood Gardens: A Botanical Wonderland in Pennsylvania